Gone are the days when an intense cyclone like Claudette would shrink our GDP by about 8%. That's because four decades later sugar weighs about nineteen times less in our economy. The risk now is being visited by a series of cyclones in a much shorter period of time. We will have a lot more flooding so we need to prepare for this with drains that are not built to accommodate the rainwater of one large cyclone in a month but like three of different sizes in three weeks or less. Contingency plans will therefore have to be carefully updated. So should our relationship with fellow creatures.
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Let this sink in and realise how many sustainanle solutions have been devised from ground up, and are working. No, not you Nando and Ivan, keep sleeping...
We should have a team of our young and unemployed graduates sift through this reports and come up with an action plan that we can implement immediately.
Very wise move by the Donald: consistent with his denial of climate change, he instructs the design of public buildings to neglect the effect of global warming...
Let's learn from smaller territories like Hong Kong and Macau after being severely hit by typhoon Hato, already undertaking drastic measures and learning from their mistakes:
'Professor Ng Mee-Kam of Chinese University said city planning should take into account the natural ecosystem in the long run to reduce the impact of adverse weather. “The city should be able to absorb water and return to nature in an ecologically friendly way,” she said, citing the concept of a “sponge city” to absorb, clean and reuse rainfall.'
Copy Dodoland, copy!
So, just after the Donald repealed laws that would build-in protection against flooding for public infrastructure, Harvey reminds him of an inconvenient truth...
Mauritians who have endured a cyclone rendering their house uninhabitable will surely shudder at the sheer violence of Irma's +300km/h gusts. Florida, brace yourself!
This will probably not be enough to teach Uncle Sam to change its sacrosanct way of life and swap its wooden homes for concrete ones (like us in the 60's), but the reconstruction will take its toll on us: prices of reinforcement bars have already gone up by Rs5 today, Rs15 expected in December 2017. What to expect more, when the US demand for construction materials will cause an upswing in raw materials on the world market?
And what about us: we survived Hollanda's +200km/h gusts, but did you see any building standards (including those of your subsidised solar water heaters, in-fashion aluminium openings, road-side furniture, billboards etc.) being raised in advance of visits from Irma's +300km/h friends over the forthcoming decades?
Three cyclones lining up. I wonder how new this phenomenon of a pack of storms is. Looks like the risk of more Fukushimas has risen. But not everywhere.
How new? Let the Chief Meteorologist explain it to you.
No, 'Muricah, if that's not yet a wake-up call, what will be?
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